1. Field of the Invention
This application relates to a flat display panel cutting apparatus.
2. Related Art
Along with recent full-scale development of the information age, the field of displays for displaying mass data as a visual image has been rapidly developed. In accordance with this trend, liquid crystal display devices LCDs, plasma display panel devices PDPs, field emission display devices FEDs, light emitting display devices LEDs, and the like have been introduced as flat panel display devices FPDs having the advantage of light weight, thin profile, and low power consumption, and are rapidly substituting for conventional Braun tubes (cathode ray tubes CRTs).
In general, a flat display panel fabrication process may be divided into a substrate fabrication process for acquiring first and second substrates and a cell process for forming a flat display panel by bonding both substrates together with a unique fluorescent or polarizing material layer positioned therebetween.
The substrate fabrication process and the cell process are typically carried out on first and second large-area substrates where a plurality of cell regions are identified by position in order to obtain the effects of process step reduction and yield improvement. Here, in the substrate fabrication process, pixels, thin film transistors, etc. for each of the cell regions can be formed on the first and second large-area substrates by repeatedly performing processes, such as thin film deposition, a photolithography process, and an etch process. In the cell process, a seal pattern for bonding both substrates is formed in the cell regions of any one of the first and second large-area substrates, and then both of the substrates can be bonded together with a unique fluorescent or polarizing material layer positioned therebetween. By cutting the substrates by cell region after carrying out these processes, a plurality of flat display panels can be obtained.
In the conventional cell process for cutting by cell region, a cutting apparatus can be used. The cutting apparatus typically carries out a cutting step of performing scribing along a cutting line on the surface of a target object in order to form a plurality of cracks in the X-axis and Y-axis directions and a high temperature steam spraying step of causing crack growth so that the plurality of cracks formed in the Y-axis and Y-axis directions can grow across the entire cutting line.
Although the conventional cutting apparatus can easily perform a primary crack formation for generating cracks in the X-axis and Y-axis directions in the cutting step, regions intersecting in the X-axis and Y-axis directions are damaged or broken as high temperature steam is sprayed onto primary cracks as well as onto secondary cracks in the spraying step of forming secondary cracks. Thus, a proper measure is required to solve this problem.